P.s how much did you get for it? I kind of remember you said $10,000. Dunno how much that is in real money (pounds). Also do if I keep refreshing all day what do you reckon the chances of the game coming up today are?
Hey look man, my name's "I-smel". What I lack in smarts, I at least pay back in honesty. Boink!
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I dont know how much that is in real money either, and that is very unlikely.
alright, I officially cant open both files at once.
errrrrrrrm...
bit stuck now tbh
Is there anywhere a computer you can like, borrow to get this done? Is there anybody you can send the files to and have them do this part as a favor? Can you even send the files at this point?
Hell, I've got access to some powerful school computers with CS4 on them, but I don't know a thing about flash.
I doubt I can move em anywhere. I KIND OF solved that problem by deleting part of the intro in the INTRO file- the part that I'd allready moved over.
Also Flash wouldn't open any more; I think my computer's "learned" not to open it, which scares me a bit. I've solved that aswell though.
Today I moved about 50 seconds of animation from one file over to another. I hate this game n I hate myself >:/
Alright it's finished!! By which I mean I'll get someone to play through it, then I'll contact sponsor guy (for the first time in many months) and then it'll be out.
will I even be able to export this?
will it upload anywhere?
how angry will sponsor guy be at the amount of time this took, and the probably rediculous amount of space it takes up?
all these questions and more answered tomorrow!
NICE JOB!! YOU'RE NEARLY THERE!!! Really looking forward to playing this.
nope- left it to render for ages, came back n it was nowhere fucking near able to export it before fucking up
<a href="http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9818/zzz2v.png">http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/98 18/zzz2v.png</a>
F this noise.
Is there any way you could send it to Max Games to export it? Or Tom Fulp? Or is it not a computer speed issue? Surely your sponsor wants it out as hassle free as possible?
BTW have you embedded any fonts? Because I tried to export a game ages ago and once I unembedded (probs not a word) it reduced the file size by a massive massive amount.
Assuming no font changes, he absolutely has to embed at least one font. I remember playing some of the game a few months back and seeing default fonts all over the place. It didnt look good, the tooltips were especially bad. In later versions the font was embedded and it was all good.
I cant stress enough how important i feel font embedding is, especially if youre using some of the less common fonts. Many people dont realise that not all computers in the world come with the same fonts as they have on theirs, so they dont embed and it all seems fine to them. But it isnt when someone who doesnt have the "Acid Reflux" (or whatever) font tries to run the game and only sees default fonts that may take up too much or too little space etc. etc.
tl;dr: Embedding fonts is really important, dont skip it to save space.
Most people don't know that you have to do that, because there's nothing to tell you that you're doing it wrong.
Mugunge OK I didn't explain that right. I embedded all characters of a font (should never really need to be done) on each dynamic text box. So I essentially embedded about 30 whole fonts and it really fucked up the file. If you need to embed fonts just embed numbers or letters of the font is what I meant.
Yep, that's what I'm doin.
So, uh... are things going to work out? I don't think that it's going to be impossible for you to release this or anything, but it sounds like you're pretty screwed here.
Ok so I went round to a couple forums and asked around. They all told me to buy more RAM but I KNEW that wasn't the right answer.
So I put my thinkin cap on, went away for a bit; and I came up with this bloody stupid fix. Instead of putting cutscenes IN the game, I uploaded them to a generic swf upload site and used loadMovie(); to like- LOAD them from somewhere else. Same way that a console game would load stuff from different parts of a disc.
I got the idea while changing discs in Mass Effect, which is top.
GOOD NEWS- I can export the game no problem and it runs fine.
BAD NEWS?- I don't know anything about how the internet works, but am I stealing someone's bandwidth? Is this a big deal? Am I dicking someone over here? I don't know.
Anyway PROBLEM SOLVED! I guess?
Id consider that bandwidth stealing yes. Those sites usually survive by showing ads next to the swf files that people upload, so if you embed the file right in your flash, they pay for hosting something that doesnt offer them anything in return. More likely than not, they will have an issue with that.
Whats more important though, is that i really dont think you want your games intro to rely on some other site. If the hosting site is down, your intro is down. If they find out that you are leeching bandwidth, your games intro is gone and you will have to make changes to the game and reupload it. Its just not sustainable and im sure hosting sites have ways of tracking how a swf is performing and the ad revenue from it, so if they see that one file is getting millions of hits without earning them any money, theyll remove it.
Its very important that you can upload your swf and know it contains 100% of the game you made, so itll always stay the same and always work, no matter what changes around it. If the whole thing doesnt want to export, i suggest you buy a better computer or send it to someone you can trust, who can get it exported. You spent more than a year on this game, imagine if your fix failed. That could seriously affect your games performance. Not worth it in my opinion.
Woops just read your latest response again and you mentioned cutscens, i mustve read that as the intro. Assumed that was what took up a lot of space, since the other cutscenes ive seen so far were very short compared to the intro. Anyway, my point is the same and missing all the cutscenes is even worse than missing just the intro.
what if I bought some hosting and put it up myself?
I've allready got a website, I could probably just upgrade that.
I really get the feeling that if I upgrade my computer I'm just gonna get the same problem and then feel like an idiot.
Well, you could do that but how many hits do you expect this game will get? Didnt you say at one point that CannonCrotch was played over 2 million times? Thats a lot of traffic and im not sure youll find any cheap solution that will put up with that. A lot of services offer unlimited traffic etc etc, but its basically all bullshit and im sure you know that. Unlimited traffic doesnt exist and if you use more than they are willing to pay for, theyll just shut you down.
With the cheap, "unlimited traffic" services out of the picture, you only have the paid hosting to turn to. I did a quick search for prices and found a blog post from 2009 comparing hosting services. The cheapest solution was 1.3 TB of space for 60$. Now, 1.3TB = 1.300.00 MB, so if your cutscenes and all that take up a total of 1mb, 1.3m hits will cost you 60$. Im guessing it takes up way more space than that though, cant imagine 1 mb would give you this much trouble. Lets say the size is 5mb. Then its only 260.000 hits until youve used your 60$ of traffic. Assuming this game ends up being twice as popular as CannonCrutch, getting 4m hits, youll be paying 923$ for hosting. From what i remember you said your sponsor is paying 10.000$ for the game so if the cutscenes are about 5mb and your game receives 4m hits, thats not far from 10% of your payment gone. Oh and paid hosting is a gift that keeps giving, so youll be paying for it until the day you decide to take down the game. Doesnt seem like a very good deal to me, since you only get paid once for the game, but it will keep costing you money.
I realise my numbers may be completely wrong, when it comes to how popular CannonCrotch is and possibly also the price of hosting, since i only looked at one guys blog post, but i hope you get my point. I still think you should suck it up and squeeze everything into one swf. Theres hundreds of sites that are more than happy to host your flash for free so it would be incredibly stupid to take on part of that role on your own. Youre only helping them make more money off your game, while youll be making less. If you absolutely have to host the cutscenes somewhere, talk to your sponsor and see if they can help you out.
So what's the current situation? All going well?
Been watching the situation from afar, wish I could help you, but sadly my talents with flash are next none...
However, I do have one, terrible, suggestion that could work out if you're desperate: split the game into two parts.
I know, I know, it's a terrible suggestion, but if nothing else works, this is a viable, albeit terrible solution. Hopefully, you won't need to go to such extremes. T_T
NEVEEEERRRRRR!
Any chance of a quick update?
there were still a couple glitches I had to go back in n fix.
I am now trying to remember the sponsor's email address :/
Oh, now I got it
it'll be out early May
there's allready a game comin out now
NickabockaglorySpoon
What Ditocoaf said. But mainly think of the monies.
I-smel
I really dont care how much money Ive got tbh